I get the restrictions on Swim and Climbing speeds.
I think tailed goblins and some halflings can effectively get a Climb speed at a very low level, but it's not easy or straight forward.
I'm not sure about swim speed, as Swim speed tends to level a playing field,
while Climbing can really give you an advantage.
Swim speed should be available to edilons no sooner than it is available by other means.
Same goes for climbing.
Animal companions have limits on the PC accessing their specialized forms of movement, so should edilons.
Right now, we have dragons that can't fly because them flying might allow the PC to fly.
The animal companion rule plus borrowing familiar advancement from the witch might solve the issue.
The dragon could fly, just not with you on it or in it.
The lack of interesting combat options I do not get.
The Edilon is already an effective combatant, why not let them be an interesting one?
If you don't want combat options to be weighed against other abilities, let the Summoner spend his own feats on the Edilon.
Feats are already balanced against each other.
Specific Familiars get abilities other wise unavailable, as a reward for buying the package deal.
Those abilities are not available on a one to one basis-you can't select the fairy dragons breath weapon as an ability for your owl.
There is "haggling" as 6 abilities can get you more than six abilities, if you are willing to spend them on a specific familiar.
I miss when Michael was still in the thread...
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I miss when Michael was still in the thread...
Ssssssh, don't blow his social identity LandSwordBear! I figured that if he wanted to come in here in his social identity, he would have. But instead he came in his Many Guises identity and I respect that. ^^
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Some thoughts:
— I agree with Rysky that familiar abilities aren't technically point buy, but I get where Verzen is coming from in saying that they are. Ultimately, I think the distinction doesn't matter much when both of you are basically saying is, "I pick options from a menu" and the argument is whether a specific word is printed in the book.
— I agree with Rysky that alternate Speeds most certainly aren't flavor. They're powerful enough that it takes players feats and spells to access them. I think what Verzen is trying to say (and what Ronyon is definitely saying) is that Speeds aren't an interesting option when your eidolon's core chassis feels like it ought to have it. Dragons that can't fly aren't really dragons. I'd argue that the same is true for angels.
— I agree that as written, synthesis makes casting obnoxious. I lived that live on Twitch.tv/KnowDirection. I also agree that my casting was never taken away; it was just extremely inefficient and overall made me feel worse for playing synthesis. To me, the fact that I was so effective despite not being able to show my spells is less of a sign of balance and more of a sign of how difficult it is to break PF2 because of how regimented its mathematical progression is.
— I don't think anyone here hates the summoner. I think that people want to make sure that the summoner doesn't get a reputation for being the most broken class in the game. I'm also certain that's why it's designed as conservatively as it is.
— I think it's clear that the designers probably intended for Synthesis to be more like the summoner's Merge With Eidolon feature from PF1. However, the word "Synthesist" has a specific connotation in PF1 that immediately sprung up for a ton of people in this thread. I don't think that's a bad thing, but I think it shows that the summoner needs a class path. Furthermore, the summoner already has an easy way to do this; just have each path give an action and a conduit spell, with the "buddy cop eidolon" summoner's being the two that are already in the game: Act Together (or whatever it's called; I literally never used it in our playtest game because I was too busy being the green power ranger) and the normal baseline conduit spell. I don't think making this change breaks the summoner and only serves to give the class more of an identity, which it honestly lacks.
I'm curious to see what people think about this and the synthesist summoner in general, but please, enough with the unnecessary attacks. I'd rather not see them escalate and get this thread locked. It would be obnoxious to have to restart the conversation somewhere else. :P
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I miss when Michael was still in the thread...Ssssssh, don't blow his social identity LandSwordBear! I figured that if he wanted to come in here in his social identity, he would have. But instead he came in his Many Guises identity and I respect that. ^^
Michael Sayre - Designer represents an official voice at Paizo and needs to be careful that the things he says don't get misinterpreted as official company stances when they're not or otherwise impede/divert important conversations.
Ssalarn is a dude who's been a member of these forums for the better part of a decade working on materials for a bunch of publishers who support the games we play, and likes to chat about mechanics, the way different tables play, etc. I like to still be Ssalarn when I can but need to balance that against the fact that MSD's "secret identity" isn't exactly secret and the more I post on a given topic the less clear the delineation between the two becomes :)